The best little Pour House in Colorado

Let me just start by saying that credit for the clever title of this column goes to Joanne Teeple, who ran for town council. Ironically, Joanne was the only one at the recent council meeting to point out the issue of the bus stop— or rather lack thereof, at the sparkling new Carbondale Aquatic Center.

As I don’t live within town limits, I don’t get to vote on anything, but I’m still going to tell you what I think. I didn’t want a new summer-only pool with a price tag of $13 million. At least if it was year-round, the high school could have a swim team. And as long as I’m being honest, the way things are going in town, I’m not even sure I want the Pour House to reopen. I mean, how could it ever possibly live up to all the remarkable memories?

Years ago, I was in the Pour House regularly— I don’t want to say nightly because it gives the impression I drank a lot, which I did. I was a bartender, my husband was a bartender, our friends were bartenders… We were still too young to know better, and we hung out in all the bars in Carbondale. Especially the Pour House. Skip Bell owned it then and I can see him standing there with a big grin on his face, welcoming us into the corner booth in the front window.

We could easily fit 8 or 9 people in that booth, and we still had room to add a chair on the end if someone else showed up. The game was Drunken English Chicken, and we played it religiously. Sorta like a loud verbal Uno, we either played that or charades, with one person going outside to stand on the sidewalk and act out their clues while the rest of us kept guessing and drinking and laughing on the other side of the window.

Back then, the Pour House was a place you could walk in and 90% of the time you would see someone you knew. John Martin had his usual spot at the far end of the bar, even before he convinced Sue Rogers to go in with him; buying out Skip, who stayed on as manager for several years. And the bar itself played a big part in the ‘good-old-days’ feeling you got by just walking through the door.

With all the cowboy memorabilia on the walls, and the giant room-length mirror behind the bar, it truly felt timeless. Maybe the mirror played a bigger part in the atmosphere than I realized at the time; reflecting a rosy image of all of us hanging out together, in a rustic restaurant where anything and everything was not only possible, but had probably been done before.

We’ve all heard Carbondale’s sordid red-light district stories, and some of us who have been down under the Dinkel building even believe said stories. While we all want to see local businesses succeed, it’s important we don’t change our town’s story and end up like Aspen. Those poor chuckleheads are building a whole new airport with taxpayer money to accommodate billionaires’ private jets, like the kind made by General Dynamics. Yep, that Crown family. So many coincidences for such a small town!

In Aspen, the rich get richer and the poor can take the bus. But Carbondale has always been more of a working-class town. Rodeo Thursdays, random Tuesdays, Last Saturdays— in response to the tourist success of First Fridays, we went to the Pour House on the last Saturday of each month to get a proper martini from Bert Meyers. Dancing on the bar, flipping endlessly through the jukebox, or even just sharing nachos while watching hockey with the rest of the locals bellied up to the bar, there was always a strong sense of place. The Pour House embodied the suspension in time that Carbondale experienced from my childhood until covid. A good long run, in a great place to be.

Okay, you’re right. I do want to go to the Pour House again and sit in the corner booth… Maybe even resurrect a round of Drunken English Chicken for old times’ sake.